> Already, multiple people are charging their phones in the courtyard in the morning, and it has helped an electric wheelchair user get moving when they ran out of juice.
The text is not really clear on that, but does this mean, there are also outlets (standard plugs, USB, etc) on the battery itself, where anyone who passes by can charge their devices for free - or does the battery only supply the buildings and the rest is just "oh we also put it in the middle of the sidewalk, slapped some LEDs on it and now call it a 'gathering place'"?
The first one would be useful and would people give an actual reason to gather there, the latter sounds like a marketing stunt.
It'd be a better assumption that the charge points are close to the seating.
See also:
A 60 kWh energy system with seating and public charging, it also provides power to charitable foundations in the town and is capable of delivering power in the event of outages.
and
In the end we have a pretty generous NEM agreement so it wasn't necessary, but it is something we researched at the time.
Batteries are easier to, ahem, ‘sell’ per dollar maybe?
I can just see a whole lot of other town squares having a public battery (and corresponding public charging facilities) like this one, in the future!
It's sort of like "town-from-100-years-ago" meets "technology-from-100-years-from-now" at this center point...
(Also, it would be a great item (if you're a salesman or enjoy sales!) to sell to small towns and municipalities... how could they say no? Wouldn't every small town want a public charging facility that doubles as a piece of art?)
Anyway, super interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of these appear in public places in the future!
All things up for grabs, electronic things that can bring people physically together. Internet-in-a-box, a Bitchat node, someone else continue, my imagination is sleeping since it's work hours...